Was The Wrong Man Executed For Killing Lindbergh Baby?

Was the Wrong Man Executed for Killing the Lindbergh Baby?
Featuring author Lise Pearlman

It was called the Crime of the Century: the kidnapping and M**der of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son on March 1, 1932. Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the crime in 1936.

Some ninety years later, Lise Pearlman, a retired judge and award-winning historian, presents a shocking new explanation of the case. In her meticulously researched exposé, , she offers key evidence that Hauptmann’s jury never heard.

On Wednesday, February 1, at 7 p.m., Judge Pearlman will guide us through the facts that she and her research collaborators uncovered, which convinced her that Hauptmann had been innocent.

This event is open to the public. Tickets, available on Eventbrite, are $5 for club members and $10 for non-members. Register early so we can be sure to accommodate everyone comfortably and safely. Masks will be required, and Suspect No. 1 will be available for purchase

Barry Scheck, Co-Director of , calls Judge Pearlman’s book “a fascinating read with a surprising conclusion.” Lloyd Gardner, a prominent historian who wrote , describes her book as “myth-smashing, beautifully written, and powerfully argued.”

After Judge Pearlman retired from the bench, she decided to write a book about famous trial lawyers. Her research took several detours, however, as she became fascinated with Fay Stender, a pioneering criminal defense lawyer and the death penalty trial that made her famous: People v. Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers. In 2012, Judge Pearlman published, It compared the Newton trial to more famous ones, including the Lindbergh trial. Her second book about the Newton trial, , came out in 2016.

She returned to a version of her original topic in in the Early 20th Century that Helped Shape Today’s America. Published in 2017, it had a chapter on the Lindbergh trial.

Judge Pearlman next turned her attention back to Fay Stender, who also defended George Jackson, another Black revolutionary. The resulting book, , won the 2018 International Book Award for biographies.

Still haunted by the Lindbergh trial, the now-prolific author immersed herself in the details of the Lindbergh case and published Suspect No. 1 in 2020.

Last year, the award-winning documentary film , based on Judge Pearlman’s first book, premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival. She co-produced the film.

Judge Pearlman earned her B.A. degree at Yale University in 1971, where she was among the first women to be admitted, and earned her law degree at Berkeley Law in 1974. She clerked for California Chief Justice Donald Wright and was a Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School. She then joined a prominent Oakland law firm and rose to managing partner. In 1989, the California Supreme Court named her the first Presiding Judge of the State Bar Court.

Don’t miss this chance to hear Judge Pearlman dissect one of the most famous M**der cases in American history and to judge for yourself where the evidence leads.

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